One stormy afternoon, Auntie sat with me at our kitchen table. I was in third grade and wildly enthusiastic about everything origami, eager to show off my crane-folding skills. Relieved at a low-key activity to partake in, my bookish Auntie started to fold a paper boat for my cranes to ride in.

These past few years leading up to and under the Trump administration have been a tumultuous journey, which has left me feeling unmoored from my foundations and shaken to the very core of my identities and beliefs.

Recreating memory is often seen as a liberating phenomenon. Whether it’s expressed through songs, journal testimonies, or stories passed down across generations, memories can be powerful tools for families and close communities. But I am skeptical about its resonance for creating multicultural and caste-transcending communities in the Indian context.

A 10-year-old girl looks out to a bare and large soccer field of her elementary school. Standing on the elevated platform, she can see all around her meaningful landmarks from her first decade of memories in Ilsan, Korea, all she’s ever known.

Every summer until I was 8 years old, I visited my grandparents at my mother’s hometown in Seoul, Corea. The most enduring memories of these visits are the quotidian moments of my grandmother and me squatting in the street corner near her yeontan (briquette)-heated house, surrounded by a group of her friends and local neighbors.

Even though I never learned how to speak any Filipinx languages, the names of everyday dishes like pancit and kaldareta roll off my tongue with relative ease. Some of my strongest memories are of me waiting for my mother in our car after she had spotted a malunggay tree in a neighbor’s yard.

Asian Americans have been brought to the forefront of the news because of Harvard’s Affirmative Action case and the Asian American community has been divided about how to approach the issue. Some groups argue that Asian Americans have been systematically discriminated against because of racial quotas.

It was the first week of Christmas break in 2010. I was halfway through my final year of college and had picked up extra shifts at my part-time job at Panda Express. Walking across campus, exhausted from work and carrying my groceries, I ran into my friend Taka, an international student.

I believe in ghosts. As a young boy, I visited my father’s village of Ofu, Manu’a in American Samoa, which is known throughout the Samoan islands for its ‘aitu (spirits). One day, after an eventful afternoon of shooting pigeons (faga-lupe) with my cousins, we lost track of time and began our walk — more like a hike — back home later than expected.

As far as I know, the miniature house-shrine still perches on the corner of the wet market. I’d been in Malaysia for 14 years, and up until last year, I’d never looked inside. Next to the food truck that sells roast pork and the other one that sells water spinach bunched in rubber bands, the gilded three-walled shrine squats on its haunches over the street

Asian American churches seem to love the Book of Esther. How many Asian Christian women are named after this Old Testament heroine? I know too many Asian Esthers to count. Queen Esther represents beauty, obedience, and bravery.

There’s an African proverb that states, “Until the lions have their own historians, the history of the hunt will always glorify the hunter.”

A long time ago, the first chancellor of post-war Germany, Konrad Adenauer, joined a TV interview where a journalist asked him the following question: “You were often called ‘The Great Simplifier of Politics’.

I left my Korean church eight years ago. It was my third departure in 11 years, but this was different. This time, I didn’t walk through a revolving door into another Korean church. I walked away from church altogether.

“Stories we tell” is a fascinating documentary about the filmmaker Sarah Polley’s mother and their family. As different siblings, relatives, and family friends are interviewed and their stories interweave, the viewer begins to see different facets of a deeply complex person.

Christian theology speaks of the concept of sanctification, the process by which through a life of discipleship and faithfulness we may daily draw closer to the divine, further develop moral character, and deepen our own holiness.

Whether we want to or not, we all participate in a capitalist system that places the majority of wealth and decision making in the hands of very few. The world’s richest 1 percent own more wealth than the rest of the global population combined, while those in poorer countries see their natural resources exploited.

As a Chinese American female and the oldest of 12 children who lived in one of the poorest sections in Chicago, I did not grow up having the latest clothes or toys that were flung at us in television commercials.

We owe a lot to Yick Wo. By we, I mean Asians living in the United States, whether we’re citizens or not. And by Yick Wo, I mean the man who went to jail for running a laundromat in a wooden building.

I once asked my mom, “Why is it that so many of the models in Malaysian advertisements are white or Eurasian?” “It’s the colonial mindset,” she replied.

I received a call from my Kaki (aunt in Nepalese) in Nepal the other day. It seems she is feeling unwell again, and I am worried her body is becoming weaker day by day.

After graduating from college, I bought a one-way ticket to South Korea. A professor had invited me and two close friends to join a radical progressive group of activists in Incheon, where they were looking for English teachers.

I always feel like I am translating the latest leadership advice to make it useful. I rarely identify with the opportunities or challenges that these leaders discuss at length.

My grandparents, the first generation in my family to immigrate to the U.S. from Hong Kong, ran multiple restaurants and were considered middle-class. Although they were not rich, they were able to save enough money to invest in real estate where they used most of that money for their current retirement.

I was too close to the edge of my seat not to fall out, and when I finally did, my partner next to me returned my grin. The film we were watching had my support long before I walked through the movie theater doors, but seeing someone who looked just a little bit like me drew me deeper into the story.